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Analyzing the Monoprice Blackbird HDCP 2.2 to 1.4 Down Converter
- Arrath 3y agoNice to see that the classic "just lie about what you are" works fine.
- BonoboIO 3y agoA tragic that people that are really paying for the content are blocked and have to deal with a subpar experience. Or you pirate the show / buy a box.
- heyoni 3y agoI returned a very expensive monitor because HDCP failed with apps like Disney or hbo.
- mavamaarten 3y agoI work for a company that deals with SVOD/AVOD content. It's silly how many ridiculous things the content providers try to negotiate in the contracts for their content. Some requirements they ask for are sensible (HW decryption for their high quality renditions), some are downright idiotic because they would shut out so many devices and normal users (e.g. HW decryption on audio tracks and forcing HDCP version 2.3). We've really gone full circle and piracy is becoming the easier-to-use platform again.
- mavhc 3y agoGive them what they want, just make sure they pay for the support to refund 99% of people and ruin their reputation?
- sanitycheck 3y agoThe thing that gets me is that normal users have no interest in bothering to pirate the content, and pirates can trivially strip HDCP with a cheap bit of kit. Almost no copyright infringement is being prevented, only legitimate use. Implementing and testing it all is such a pain in the ass too.
- dylan604 3y agoThe number of people that will spend money to do this bypassing is much smaller than those that won’t. It’s like every other sort of “criminal activity”, if it’s hard to do, fewer will do it. It’s not about the consequences of getting caught that deters. It’s the level of effort required to do it.
- realusername 3y agoThere's not a single piracy user which has to bypass this though, they already get non encrypted files in full quality, this is only affecting legitimate purchases.
- sanitycheck 3y agoOnly one person needs to actually do it, per bit of content, and seed the torrent or stick it on their friends-only warez FTP or whatever the cool kids are doing now (then someone else will make the torrent from that). Everyone who wants to access it without paying will just get the torrent - which for some people is back to being more convenient and usable than paying for the stuff, as well as cheaper. The only thing it really prevents is paying customers watching the thing they've rented.
- bzzzt 3y ago
- dublinben 3y agoIt seems like deceptive advertising for Amazon to list a title for sale in a format they won't actually deliver to your device.
- CoastalCoder 3y ago> And that’s the end of the story: the converters work, they’re passing through type 1 contents, and there’s nothing the movie studios can do about it. I suspect that's not giving enough credit to the lobbying industry.
- h2odragon 3y agoCell phones transmitting in the clear? We'll just make it illegal to sell radios to the public that can receive those frequencies! Old TVs with "high UHF" channels could sometimes pick up early analog cell traffic. People didn't appreciate having that pointed out.
- RCitronsBroker 3y agoisn’t it funny how the entertainment industry basically stamped our piracy entirely by offering a comprehensive, more easy to use and affordable solution in the form of well-functioning online streaming, but then fucked it all up by IP cockfighting that splintered the market faster than the Weimar Republic? And if that wasn’t enough stupidity to do the trick, they force so much piracy protection up the throats of content providers til it’s unusable of a third of their clients
- hypercube33 3y agoI wouldn't say it's funny. They had most of the stuff people wanted - easy payment monthly. Good ux. Lots of movies and tv. then they figured they could get a few more pennies than Netflix was giving and that they could do it better. Read: so far no
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- creaturemachine 3y agoNetflix saw the amount of cash going out the door to studios and thought, hey we can do what they do, started shoveling their own content and overnight became the richest studio in Hollywood.
- fragmede 3y agoThey also saw the writing on the wall when the president of HBO said that they would never license their content to Netflix. The reaction to create their own content was in response to that, among other things.
- te_chris 3y agoAnd mostly produce garbage. Netflix is definitely not forever and a huge ZIRP baby.
- ryandrake 3y agoSeems like it's a universal law of media companies: They constantly and seemingly deliberately won't allow any distribution channel to get good enough to beat "piracy". As soon as something comes along that has the potential of being a one-stop shop, they fuck everything up by splintering into many services you have to pay for individually. As soon as something comes along that offers a huge catalog, they fuck everything up by fighting among themselves over IP rights and exclusivity and randomly removing random shows from random seasons. As soon as something comes along that is cheap enough to make the risk of piracy not worth it, they fuck everything up by jacking up the price. As soon as something comes along that delivers piracy-like video quality over streaming, they fuck it up by over-compressing it and otherwise nerfing the video quality. It's like these media executives are meeting every year to ensure that their products are all just shitty enough to keep piracy alive.
- dsr_ 3y agoFor people who are wondering: $30 US, free domestic shipping. About the same price with different names on it at AliExpress.
- zaroth 3y ago> about the same price … at AliExpress. It seems like this is something that Monoprice really excels at. Their markups on stuff like this is just remarkably low.
- mindslight 3y agoMy biggest complaint about Monoprice is they've jacked up their prices over the past several years to switch over to the "free" shipping paradigm. Cables used to be less than a third of the current prices. Now they've tacked that one-unit shipping cost onto each unit even when you're buying more than one. I get that the market is heavily attracted towards lazily clicking "buy it now" on one or two things, but I really wish vendors would figure out a way of reconciling "free" shipping with the efficiency of batch ordering through significant quantity/order size discounts and whatnot. Maybe Monoprice will eventually get there with their business account type, but I haven't seen signs of that yet. As for the original article, cool protocol dissection. But I can't fathom needing to care about HDCP versions. If your video source makes you deal with hostile anti-features, get a new video source.
- mschuster91 3y ago> And that’s the end of the story: the converters work, they’re passing through type 1 contents, and there’s nothing the movie studios can do about it. It’s all good. Actually, they can... yank Lattice's license and/or keys for selling a chip that does things prohibited by the standard. That would render a ton of legitimate devices useless, but that also wasn't a problem when the HDCP v1 keys of a bunch of software BD/HDDVD players got yanked after their keys were dumped...
- dylan604 3y agoHow would this work in practice if the device is never online and never updated with a list of acceptable device keys? Would it be applied at the encryption side to make keys that do not work with the offending key?
- tinus_hn 3y agoThere is a provision that works using new content which could instruct the player to add certain keys to a revocation list. So if you buy a new Blu-ray and play it your player can be longer work with that key. These systems are so thoroughly broken though that as far as I know this has never been used and the protection is more of a legal one.
- dylan604 3y agoagain, it's the player that is blocking the key, which has been updated via a network connection that the user allowed to happen. If this is an inline device that is air gapped and doesn't even have a mechanism for updating the keys, how would this device ever be affected by its key being rejected?
- toast0 3y agoUpdates to the player can come with content. For streaming content, the provider can make streaming contingent on an updated firmware/application package that bans the hdcp keys. For disc based content, new discs can include key revocation. That said, HDCP downgrading for compatibility is or at least was in the spec, so there's no justification to revoke the keys for the device discussed in the article.
- zamadatix 3y agoCan you then feed this into an HDCP 1 stripper?
- gjsman-1000 3y agoYep. There was an incident with this in 2015 when a Netflix movie was leaked in perfect 4K, horrifying movie studios. They found out that the pirate had used a HDCP 2.2 to 1.4 splitter; and immediately sued the manufacturer of the device. They then quickly settled out of court when the manufacturer of the device showed in their own licensing manual that downgrading the HDCP version for compatibility wasn’t prohibited. Oops.
- TheCleric 3y agoYes, I believe this was referenced at the bottom of the article: https://torrentfreak.com/4k-content-protection-stripper-beats-warner-bros-in-court-1605xx/ https://torrentfreak.com/4k-content-protection-stripper-beat...
- jihadjihad 3y agoI think I am getting confused, maybe someone can help me understand. Is the purpose of this device to allow true 4k content to be displayed on an older 4k device, i.e. one that has an older HDCP version? What was the purpose of including a 1080p TV in the test, if it could never display anything in HDR / 4k anyway, with or without the device?
- thedanbob 3y ago> Is the purpose of this device to allow true 4k content to be displayed on an older 4k device, i.e. one that has an older HDCP version? Yes. Or more specifically, content that the source has tagged "high value" which is often 4k. > What was the purpose of including a 1080p TV in the test, if it could never display anything in HDR / 4k anyway, with or without the device? From the article: > I wanted to see whether or not there’d be a visual indication that the Fire TV was playing lower quality content.
- gosub100 3y agoIf he didn't use the 1080p TV and only had the 4K, then 1 of the following would happen: 1 black screen 2 1080p playback 3 4K playback if he got (2), he wouldn't be able to tell if the problem was with (HDCP+4K) or just (4K). Proving that it works in 1080p on a TV that doesn't even know what 4K is establishes the baseline and eliminates the ambiguity.
- jihadjihad 3y agoOkay, that makes sense, I was definitely confused about that. Thanks for clearing that up for me.
- js2 3y agoThis EZCOO HDMI splitter will also do the job as well as let you customize the EDID: https://www.amazon.com/Splitter-l-b-y-Vision-Atmos-Scaler/dp/B07VP37KMB/143-5087847-2532316 https://www.amazon.com/Splitter-l-b-y-Vision-Atmos-Scaler/dp... Some folks use that splitter with home theater projectors to enable LLDV (player-led aka Low Latency Dolby Vision). For more money and functionality, see the devices made by HDFury (mentioned at the end of the article). e.g. the Dr HDMI 4K: https://hdfury.com/product/dr-hdmi-4k/ https://hdfury.com/product/dr-hdmi-4k/
- phh 3y agoI didn't want to publicize it, just in case, to keep the supply available but now that you've done it: I strongly recommend that product. As a STB manufacturer it is immensely useful. You can keep your 4k DV video output, and use a 10$ USB capture to develop and test as if you had a real TV. It is also useful to reduce ewaste: there have been some 4k TVs without HDCP2. 2+HDMI 2.0, this makes it 4k again. Likewise, I have an HDMI 1.4 AVR, this splitter allows me to use it at full feature (DTS-HD being not available in HDMI 1.4) My only complain is not being able to switch to tunneled Dolby Vision (as a user you probably don't care), and it's not immensely stable (you probably want to give it a proper radiator)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- gorkish 3y agoI just want to reiterate how fucking ridiculous it is that this thing should even exist.
- aidenn0 3y agoI'll have to try this for my HT setup. My receiver supports a newer version of HDCP than my TV, and this confuses the content protection when playing from a web-browser. Right now I use a box that strips HDCP, but it gets very warm even when no source is plugged into it so I'm worried about its lifetime.
- pseudosavant 3y agoHere we are almost 24 years into HDMI/HDCP and it is still trivial to make a bit perfect copy of 4K stream, and even easier to rip a 4K Blu-ray. I'd like to say the studios mostly failed, but there would be common consumer devices for copying movies, just like there used to be dual cassette tape decks for copying tapes.
- sp332 3y agoI thought it was still kind of a pain to rip a 4k blu-ray?
- toast0 3y agoI've only done one, but it was the same process as a regular Blu-Ray. The drive I already had was compatible. The hard part I'm having is playback with all the bells and whistles. Afaik, support for HDR10+ output on computers is sketchy, but blu-ray menu support on playback platforms (android tv, webos, tizen, roku) is non-existant. Anyway, most devices top out at 100M ethernet, which is below the max bitrate of 4k blu-ray (peaks of 150Mbps). I've heard good things about Apple TV, but also that it's very difficult to manage unless you've got other Apple products, and my Apple IIe doesn't count. I have a 1G Android TV device, but it still stutters in playback of high bitrate scenes when I ripped to a mkv.
- DIVx0 3y agoI regularly play UHD HDR content I ripped from my blu-ray collection to my 4k AppleTV over 1Gbs Ethernet. I use the Infuse app instead of Plex, no stutters, no issues, looks great! sidebar: I've had a lot of problems with the AppleTV plex app, it does not play some HDR content well, or at all. Plex on my nVidia Shield works well.
- pseudosavant 3y agoBoth of my LG Blu-ray drives rip 4K discs as easily as standard 1080p discs. My workflow is a script that calls MakeMKV's CLI with the settings I use every time. Then I run that through Handbrake to make a reasonable sized file. Just a handful of clicks. Having a recent-ish (RTX 2070 Super) really helps as the NVenc H264/H265 engine is blazing fast (100+ fps), and is the first hardware encoder I've used that always beats Handbrake/x264 for quality and filesize.